Balto-Slavic phonological developments (original) (raw)
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Proto-Indo-European long vowels and Balto-Slavic accentuation
Baltistica 47/2, 5–48., 2012
The article is a critical review of the evidence regarding the reflexes of Proto-Indo-European long vowels in Baltic and Slavic. It is argued that in Balto-Slavic, inherited long vowels receive circumflex intonation in all positions in the word. Examples like Lith. várna ‘raven’, žvėrìs ‘wild animal’ and grė́bti ‘to rake’ that are traditionally thought to show that an Indo-European long vowel obtained acute intonation must be explained differently. A number of verbal roots forming a yod-present can be shown to have undergone metatony rude in Lithuanian and Latvian and metatony douce in Lithuanian. There is no evidence for the thesis that Balto-Slavic monosyllables always had circumflex intonation. Lithuanian examples that would show this development can be shown to be due to inner-Lithuanian innovations. Finally, Balto-Slavic ā-stems and intensive verbs with long vocalism generally have circumflex intonation and can be shown to reflect Proto-Indo-European formations containing a long vowel.
The article adresses a question raised by the Progressive Palatalization of Slavic (“Prog”): why is it that palatalized velars are absent from native material in the case of *g in the dialect continuum continued by present-day Russian and Belorussian? (As in Russian jagá vs. Polish jędza and SCr jéza.) Owing to the precise set of conditions under which it did or did not take place, Prog is usually agreed to have given rise to paradigms in which modi-fied and unmodified velars alternated in stem-final position, e.g. Gsg *otьća (modified) vs. Asg *otьkъ (unmodified). In all attested systems, those alterna-tions have been regularized, most often in favour of the modified consonant, so that we find, say, *otьćь instead of expected **otьkъ. But the reverse occurs as well. In nominal paradigms, for instance, Russian/Belorussian appears to have generalized the unmodified consonant in the case of *g, as illustrated by jaga. Why? The article argues that the background is provided by the palatalizion of consonants followed by front vowels which underlies the palatalization corre-lation of Russian and neighbouring Slavic languages. Before front vowels, the process obliterated the difference between *s/z and *ś/ź (< *x/g by Prog). As a consequence, paradigms became complex in a way that favoured regulariza-tion of the unmodified velar (section 3.6). It is suggested that palatalizion of consonants followed by front vowels originated in Baltic (section 4.2).
Three problems of Balto-Slavic phonology
Baltica & Balto-Slavica
Professor Hamp has recently returned to the problem of PIE *eu in Balto-Slavic (1976). I take the matter up again because his analysis has certain implications for the relative chronology of sound laws. After a detailed study of the earlier literature, Endzelin concludes that both prevocalic and preconsonantal *eu have a twofold reflex in Balto-Slavic, viz. *ev and *jau (Slavic ju) if the following vowel is front, but *av (Slavic ov) and *au if the following vowcl is front, but *av (Slavic ov) and *au (Slavic u) if the following vowel is back (1911 : 78-104). This point of view is often repeated in the more recent literature (e. g., Vaillant 1950 : 110 and 123, Stang 1966 : 32 and 74). I agree with Hamp that it cannol be correct. The Slavic dat. sg. synovi < *-euei and nom. pl. synove < *-eues suffice to show that prevocalic *eu yielded Slavic ov before front vowcls äs well. Since H. Pedersen's conclusive discussion of Lith. tau (1935), it can hardly be doubted that the only phonetic reflex of preconsonantal *eu was *jau in Balto-Slavic. If the Balto-Slavic reflex of PIE *eu was *av (or rather *ov) before vowels and *jau (or tarher *jou) before consonants, the occurrence of ev requires an explanation, especially in Lith. devyni, Slavic devgtt. The Suggestion that de-was borrowed from desimtjdesgtb cannot be maintained. As Hamp points out, ev must have been reintroduced in the cardinal *dovin < *Η^ neun on the model of the ordinal *deuno-, which was subsequently replaced by *devino-on the model of the new cardinal *devin. 1 It follows that preconsonantal *eu had becn preserved at a stage which was posterior to the phonetic elimination of prevocalic *eu and that the latter development was early Balto-Slavic. This chronology is in contradiction with the one given by Zupitza, who dates the Slavic development of *ev to *ov after the first palatalization (1907 : 251). The latter chronology i s based on Czech navsteva ,visit', Old Czech vscieviti ,to visit', which is derived from *(s)keu-, cf. Gothic usskaws, Latin caveo (Matzenauer 1884 : 179 and Mikkola 1904 : 96). Though Machek does not even mention this etymology (1968 : 392), I think that it is correct. It is certainly preferable to the proposed connections wAh Lith. svecias and Slavic posetiti, which do not fit phonologically, or PIE *ueid-(Berneker), which cannot be identified without violating Winter's law (sce below). I assume that ev was restored in this word on the basis of preconsonantal *eu, e. g. in cuti, in the same way äs in devgtb.
Issues in Balto-Slavic accentology
Accent Matters: Papers on Balto-Slavic …, 2011
After the very well-organized Leiden conference for which we must be grateful to Tijmen Pronk, it seems appropriate for me to review some of the papers, as I did after the previous conferences in Zagreb and Copenhagen. The aim of this review is merely to point out some of the differences of opinion which require further debate. Mislav Benić presents a detailed description of verbal accentuation in the dialect of Kukljica on the island of Ugljan. The dialect has no tonal distinctions but does have vowel quantity in stressed and pretonic syllables, with large-scale lengthening of short vowels under the stress. It has preserved the Common Slavic distinction between original pretonic long vowels, which were shortened as a result of the rise of the new timbre differences, and new pretonic long vowels which arose as a result of Dybo's law (cf. Kortlandt 2005: 126-128), e.g. jazȋk 'tongue' (with secondary lengthening of the stressed vowel) versus nạ̄ rȍd 'people'. It has also preserved the distinction between simplex verbs with mobile stress, e.g. budȋn 'wake up', gasȋn 'turn off', and compound verbs where the prefix lost the stress to the root in accordance with Dybo's law, e.g. prebȗdin, ugȁsin (ibidem, 127). Moreover, it has preserved the accentual mobility of the original nasal present in nȅ znon 'don't know' (cf. Kortlandt 1985) and the retracted stress of the original imperative in vȗci, cȋdi of vūčȇn 'pull', cidȋn 'filter' (cf. Kortlandt 1979: 53). Miguel Carrasquer Vidal proposes a derivation of acute and circumflex tones from the syllable structure of the proto-language. His account involves tones on unstressed syllables, resyllabifications, analogical replacements, ad hoc rules for different stem formations and for different languages, secondary developments, unexplained exceptions for which he posits a PIE distinction between *i and *j, and structural ambiguity of the postvocalic ending *-ns. He lists a number of Slavic Auslautgesetze in order to arrive at the correct output. Since I have discussed all of the issues elsewhere, I shall not return to the many points of disaggreement here. Vladimir Dybo compares the West Caucasian, Balto-Slavic and Japanese accent systems in terms of "dominant" and "recessive" morphemes expressed in syllables and contours. In my review of last year's conference in Copenhagen, I have shown how the class of dominant suffixes originated from several retrac
From Proto-Indo-European to Slavic
Journal of Indo European Studies, 1994
A correct evaluation of the Slavic evidence for the reconstruction of the Indo-European proto-language requires an extensive knowledge of a considerable body of data. While the segmental features of the Slavic material are generally of corroborative value only, the prosodic evidence is crucial for the reconstruction of PIE. phonology. Due to the complicated nature of Slavic historical accentology, this has come to be realized quite recently. 1 As a result, much of the earlier literature has become obsolete to the extent that it is based upon an interpretation which does not take the multifarious accentual developments into account. I shall give one example. In Evidence for laryngeals (ed. by W. Winter, 1965), which remains a milestone in Indo-European studies, two of the authors adduce the short accent of SCr. sȑce 'heart' as evidence for a Proto-Slavic acute tone (117, 133). Actually, Slavic *sьrdьce has a falling tone and mobile accentuation, as is clear from the Slovene and Russian evidence. The circumflex was regularly shortened in trisyllabic word forms (see 9.4 below), e.g. mlȁdōst 'youth', cf. mlȃd 'young', and prȃse 'suckingpig', gen.sg. prȁseta. This does not detract from the fact that we have to reconstruct an acute tone for Balto-Slavic in view of Latvian sirds 'heart'. In Slavic, the acute tone became circumflex in words with mobile stress in accordance with Meillet's law (see 5.4 below). The tone of trisyllabic neuters can never be used for comparative purposes because they always have mobile accentuation if they belong to the older layers of the language. The Balto-Slavic acute tone in the word for 'heart' is no evidence for either a laryngeal or a PIE. long vowel because it arose phonetically before PIE. *d in accordance with Winter's law (see 4.3 below). The only evidence for an original long vowel is found in Old Prussian seyr, which in combination with the East Baltic and Slavic material points to a PIE. alternating paradigm *ḱēr(d), *ḱṛd-. The full grade form of the root *ḱerd-is attested in Lith. šerdìs 'core', OCS. srěda 'middle'. The small chapter on Balto-Slavic in Evidence for laryngeals is not only very short, but also quite useless. In the following I intend to present a synopsis of the main developments from Proto-Indo-European to Slavic in their chronological order so far as that has been established at this moment. It is largely based on my earlier account of the accen-1 For a survey of recent research I refer to the Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung 92 (1978), 269-281.